WT Business Beat

By Nick Wakeman

Are you ready for the next big thing?

A couple weeks ago, I heard Michele Kang, CEO of Cognosante LLC talk about the coming opportunity in health IT, particularly in the states.

One of the main points she was making, and the one I focused on in my blog, was that if you aren’t already in the market, it’s probably too late because the dollars are getting ready to flow fast and furious.

It looks like she had her crystal ball out that day, at the Raymond James Government Services & Technology Summit. Not two weeks later, the Health and Human Services Department has announced $1.5 billion in grants to 11 states.

The money will be used to build insurance exchanges, marketplaces for individuals to buy health insurance, under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Under the law, all states need to have marketplaces in place in 2014.

Delaware, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, and Vermont received awards today for Level One Exchange Establishment Grants, which are one-year grants for building the marketplaces. California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, and Oregon received Level Two Exchange Establishment Grants, which are multi-year grants to further develop their marketplaces.

What got me thinking about Kang’s comments from earlier this month is that she’s right that if you wanted to grab a piece of this pie, today is not the day to start. Probably two or three years ago would have been the best time to begin talking to the states and others about how to build an exchange, what you can do with it, etc.

The other thing that I started thinking about is, standing here today, what’s the next hot opportunity that won’t hit the market until 2015?

If I were a company looking to invest, what customers should I be talking to? What challenges or problems should I focus on? Is there a disruptive technology I should be adding to my portfolio?

I don’t have answer, but I definitely would like to hear some ideas.

Posted by Nick Wakeman on Jan 18, 2013 at 7:24 PM

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Reader Comments

Wed, Jan 23, 2013
John Hennessy

You're a bit off in your estimate of when healthcare ceased to be an opportunity. It is a very viable opportunity now and will be for several years to come not only due to Obamacare but also the additional initiatives that are required to get healthcare more efficient and more affordable. This is a ten year plus opportunity but don't jump in we would like to have it all to ourselves

Wed, Jan 23, 2013

I would invest in US Preventive Contact me for details 610 834 0277 Evan Scott

Wed, Jan 23, 2013
Chris G.
Washington DC

The next big thing is already here to an extent. SSD/Flash Storage will become more widely used, and begin to displace mainstream spinning disk storage over the next 5-10 years. Watch for new companies with better technology than is available today. This includes savings on space, weight, power, and price. Government and Commercial companies will both have to take a serious look at these technologies since data is growing too fast for both space and power to be able to handle.

Wed, Jan 23, 2013
cpathenry
Virginia

Medical instrumentation (portable for doctor and patient use

Wed, Jan 23, 2013
David Claiborne
Vienna, VA

The next big technology breakthough will be the ability to develop software applications via configuration verses standard coding. This process will speed up application development by 30-50 times and has the potential to put thousands if not millions of coders out of work, bring outsourced business from overseas back to the USA and enable lines of business to get to market much quicker. We have this breakthough technolgy and are marketing it to select companies.

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